Tips for Packers fans going to the Super Bowl

by Grant Martin on

It’s been a long, hard road, but the Packers have finally bested their rivals to the south and made it into the Super Bowl. Congratulations. Now it’s time to pack up the queso dip, send the kids to their grandparents and make your way down to Dallas for the showdown.

Texas! The very word brings a tidal wave of emotions. It’s a whole new ball game down there – different food, different politics and different ways of getting business done. Without the right proper guidance and a hand full of travel savvy, the gentle northerner can be eaten alive in Texas. And that’s why we’ve put together this handy guide for surviving Dallas as a Packer.

Get there
Packers fans are scattered throughout the Midwest, but chances are, a long trip south is store for most of them. The cheapest way, of course, is to drive. Provided the weather stays stable throughout the heartland, it can take between 17 and 21 hours to get from Wisconsin down to Dallas – and that’s without bathroom breaks or a stop to see the inlaws.

Public transportation is filling up fast, so if you’re even considering taking a train, bus or airplane you need to book your tickets NOW. Passage by Greyhound is possible from Green Bay or Milwaukee for a shocking $311 round trip, and as coaches fill up that price is only going to wander higher.A slightly less expensive and more comfortable passage can be made on Amtrak, where $270 can get one a round trip connecting through Chicago from Green Bay or $224 buys a ticket from Milwaukee.

The fastest and least economical way would be to fly, though prices for those tickets are already pushing past the $325 range from Green Bay. Milwaukee, on the other hand, is boasting fares in the upper $400’s. And if you want to leave on Monday, the day after the game? That’ll be over $800. Our suggestion for that route is to choose an alternative departure airport (Chicago’s O’Hare and Minneapolis are a stone’s throw away from Wisconsin) or fly on an alternate date. Through you might miss a few extra days of work by returning Wednesday morning you’ll save a ton on airfare.

Eat there
Comfort food is a prominent theme in Midwestern cooking and Texas is takes no departure. The obvious choice for sweet southern cooking lies in barbecue, and there are a host of possible around the city that nearly guarantee a delicious experience. D Magazine has a great roundup of barbecue joints in the city and in a pinch you can always check Kevin’s Barebecue Joints for an allstar list of restaurants.

Need something closer to home? Check out Scardello (3511 Oak Lawn Avenue), the top local cheese shop, where lo and behold, one of the featured cheeses this month is a Wisconsin favorite by the name of Rush Creek Reserve.

Still, no visit to Dallas would be complete without a trip to one of the most popular restaurants in the city, and that means tex-mex. Two of our favorite twitteratti, @flyingphotog and @meridethlmckee, suggest Chuy‘s (4544 McKinney Avenue) and Uncle Julio’s (multiple locations) for local favorites.

Alternatively, Victor Tango’s (3001 N. Henderson) serves up a fine dish of urban bar fare, and their kitchen even stays open late for the partiers.

Stay there
At this point in the game there aren’t a ton of free rooms to spare in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and whatever’s remaining is starting to skyrocket in price. Our favorite hotels in the city, The Joule and the Ritz-Carlton are booked solid, though sister properties, (Marriott, 3300 Championship Parkway and Aloft, 122 E. John Carpenter Freeway) still have some availability.

Frugal travelers will probably have the best luck in finding workable accommodations. There are a half-dozen Motel 6‘s in the DFW area, each available for less then seventy bucks a night, and above that, a full range of Econo-Lodges with some moderate ability.

The NYLO Dallas (1001 West Royal Lane) also still has some rooms remaining.

Weather highs have been ranging from the 50’s to the 60’s so if you’ve got an adventurous streak about you there are a startling number of campgrounds and RV parks circling the city. Texasoutside has a great database of parks.

[Flickr image via Phil Roeder]

Super Bowl XLV at sea? You bet

by Chris Owen on

Just about every cruise ship has a sports bar. Many ships have huge LED outdoor screens. It just seems to be a natural pairing to add this year’s Superbowl in for on-board programming. Cruise lines are doing just that and more.

Just to be sure the big game would be around for those sailing on Superbowl Sunday, Doug Parker of CruiseRadio got with each line to see what they had planned. “I’ve called every cruise line and most got right back to me with their plans” said Parker, working on a story for next week’s Cruise Radio broadcast.

They will be showing the game from “at least one lounge area on each ship” replied Holland America Line. “We will be airing the game fleet-wide!” chimed in Royal Caribbean.

Cruise lines have played a part in Super Bowls of the past too. In 2005, cruise ships parked close to Jacksonville Florida to serve as floating hotels for Super Bowl fans. On board, cruise lines often offer special game day packages complete with junk food and traditional beverages.

Travel Agencies are joining in the fun too, sponsoring “Super Bowl Cruise Party” groups on several major cruise lines. Boasting “Large screen TV’s everywhere”, Super Bowl groups formed long ago requiring just a small deposit to sign up and allowing monthly payments over time.

There is one drawback to watching the Super Bowl at sea though:

Cruise ship television reception works off a satellite system that must constantly be re-aimed because the ship is in motion. That can cause momentary signal loss from time to time. A few seconds lost at a critical moment on the football field could be a problem.

Would mutiny result?

Photo: Chris Owen

Craigslist user scams New York Times writer in London

by Elizabeth Seward on

Being victimized by internet scam artists isn’t hearsay–it’s happening all over, to all kinds of people, and all of the time. New York Times writer, Seth Kugel, published his personal testimony yesterday–a testimony of innocent trip-planning gone wrong.

While organizing his pending trip to London, Kugel found himself on Craigslist looking for attractive sublets in good neighborhoods. When he came across a Notting Hill studio available for a seemingly fair price (around $73 a night), he emailed the address in the ad and was responded to right away.

When the respondent requested that Kugel wire the money directly to his bank account, red flags should have been waving wildly in his face. But in Kugel’s defense, he’d recently lived in Brazil for two years; a country he claims utilizes wire transfers for even everyday expenses, like medical bills.

But he was duped. And that’s really all there is to it. Myriad are the ways in which internet scammers trick users out of their money, but it sure seems like accommodations, be them temporary or ostensibly permanent, are among scam artists’ favorite lures.

The good news? Kugel pieced together an insightful and resourceful list of ways in which we all can better avoid being scammed. You should read it here.

[photo by Elizabeth Seward]

Killer B: Why You Should Ignore the New Letter Grading System for New York Restaurants

by David Farley on
A specter is haunting New York restaurants. An eight-by-ten placard sporting a big letter–A, B, or C–has put the fear in the hearts of chefs and restaurateurs around the city. As reported by Gadling last summer, letter grades issued by the Department of Health have begun appearing in restaurant windows, announcing to passersby and potential diners the hygiene grade the restaurant scored on its last inspection.

Good idea, right? The New York Times reported last week that nearly 60 percent of the city’s 24,000 restaurants have an “A” grade. But what of those eating establishments that have a lowly “B” or “C” grade? The Department of Health imported the idea from Los Angeles, where I grew up. You steered clear of restaurants with a B or lower, assuming that the kitchens must be dens of filth, crawling with unsavory creatures. And so I was all in favor of the letter grades following me from the West Coast. That is, until I started doing a bit of research and realized that a “B” grade in a restaurants wasn’t as frightening as it appears. You should ignore the new letter grading system for New York restaurants. Here’s why.

Let’s rewind three years to February 2007. That’s when someone captured on video a bevy of rats making themselves at home in a KFC in Greenwich Village. The copious amount of press it attracted forced the DOH’s hand and they began clamping down, popping into restaurants with more frequency. Two and a half years later they decided on the Los Angeles-style letter grades.

The overall point of the letter grades is transparency. Previously, in New York you had to log on to the Department of Health’s website if you wanted to find out what a restaurant’s score was at the last inspection.


Now that violations will result in a big fat scarlet letter affixed to the front of the restaurant, chefs aren’t taking any chances. In fact, they’re being too safe. Many are freezing ingredients when they didn’t before, for example, as well as making other compromises to their approach to ingredients that the wouldn’t have done before.

“The problem,” Steve Crane, the owner of Greenwich Village Italian restaurant Po, told me, “is that the DOH can go around until they find a violation.” Case in point: Po received a “B” when the inspector noticed the hose attached to the espresso machine was dripping water into a bucket, not into an actual drain. Surely, a violation. But surely not one that’s going to compromise the cleanliness of the food. Yet when potential diners see a “B” stuck to the window, they may think the worst.

That’s the concern of Andrew Rigie, director of the New York State Restaurant Association, who says that he’s concerned the grades can be misleading. “Either a restaurant is safe to serve food or they’re not. A or F. In no way is the restaurant industry trying to mislead the public. But we don’t want to turn people away because they see a B or C. When, in actuality, a B or C is safe, according to the DOH, to eat at.”

All that said, the New York State Restaurant Association, which was initially opposed to the letter grades, has told restaurants to keep mum about their criticisms of the letter grades in the spirit of diplomacy. Which maybe explains why several chefs and restaurateurs told me how much they hated the letter grades, but wouldn’t go on the record to voice their complaints.

So next time you’re in New York and the restaurant you had your heart set on has a big fat “B” displayed in the window, it’s not as eyebrow-raising as it might seem. It’s not because there were rats running around the front room; it’s more like the trash can in the corner of the kitchen didn’t have a cover or the espresso machine wasn’t dripping into a proper drain.

Super Bowl bound? Check out these ten travel friendly gadgets for your trip!

by Scott Carmichael on

People who watch the Super Bowl at home use the big game as an excuse to shop for a new big screen TV – but can you use the game as an excuse to go gadget shopping? You bet you can.

We’ve collected ten gadgets that can make the trip to Arlington even more exciting – from a neat product that can send your Super Bowl photos to the Internet as soon as you make them, to a device you leave at home that allows you to watch the Super Bowl commercials (and other fun content) on your phone or laptop – no matter where you are.

[AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez]


Eye-Fi wireless memory card

Made some amazing photos of the “big game”? Find yourself a Wi-Fi hotspot, turn your camera on, and send them instantly to a variety of online photo services – including Facebook, Picasa and YouTube (for videos). Cards work in any device that takes SD memory cards, as well as several recent camcorders.

Product page: Eye.Fi
Price: from $49.99

Super Bowl mobile apps

There are 100’s of mobile applications designed just for the Super Bowl. Some are useless – others provide everything you’d ever need for the big game in a single app. Apps are available for almost every mobile platform, but you’ll obviously find the best quality stuff in the mobile market of your iPhone or Android device.

For iPhone specific apps, check out our friends at tuaw.com.

Prodcuct page: iPhone App Store, Android Marketplace, Blackberry App world
Price: from free

Pocket HD Camcorder

The rules at most stadiums prohibit camcorders – but thanks to the current generation of pocket HD camcorders, you won’t have a problem getting one of these past the checkpoint. Just keep in mind that almost none of these shooter will feature a zoom lens (other than digital zoom), so if you want a close-up of that hot guy or girl 50 rows away, you’ll be better off with a decent digital camera with HD video support.

Product page: Flip Camera
Price: from $149.99

Balanzza Mini Luggage scales

Prevent disappointment at the airport by investing $25 in a compact luggage scale -especially if you went a little crazy at one of the merchandise stands at the stadium, your airline may want a big chunk of whatever cash you have left to let your overweight luggage back on the plane.

Thank goodness airlines don’t weigh passengers (yet) – all that stadium food would cost a fortune to load on the plane!

Product page: Balanzza Mini
Price: $24.95

Vulkano Multimedia streamer

Catch pre-game TV by streaming your home cable or satellite signal over the Internet to your mobile phone or laptop. Simply hook the Vulkano up to your home AV system, and the box sends TV anywhere in the world – including to your smartphone when you are waiting for the game to begin. Bonus: watch the halftime commercials as the are broadcast.

Product page: Monsoon Multimedia Vulkano
Price: from $109.99 (with promo code)

XtremeMac InCharge Mobile

Traveling with an iPhone usually means having to decide between using your phone all day long and running out of battery life by dinner time, or only using your phone for emergencies. If you want to take full advantage of your phone at the game, consider the new XtremeMac InCharge Mobile. This 2300mAh battery pack can almost triple your normal battery life.

To top it all off, the InCharge Mobile also features a built in kickstand, LED battery indicator and MicroUSB charger/sync port.

Product page: XtremeMac
Price: $79.99

Scottevest jacket or vest


Carrying all your gadgets to the game in a backpack or other carrier can be a pain in the backside – especially when you need your hands to carry beer and burgers. A Scottevest jacket has up to 25 different pockets, some large enough to hold an iPad or other large device. Jackets come in a variety of styles, colors and sizes.

Product page: Scottevest
Price: from $100

Nikon S8100 digital camera

The new Nikon S8100 is a compact digital camera with a 10x optical zoom, full HD video and easy to use controls. Best of all, the camera can be found for under $250 – making it a fantastic bargain.

Product page: Nikon S8100
Price: $299 (MSRP, $249 in most retail stores)

Joby Gorollapod Tripod

Large tripods are banned from the stadium, but compact flexible tripods from Joby won’t bother anyone. The newest magnetic tripods from Joby can be stuck to metal or wrapped around almost any other object.

Product page: Joby Gorillapod
Price: from $19.95

Monster Mobile Jamz headphones

The atmosphere in the stadium may be exploding – but sometimes you may want to just listen to some of your own music before the game begins. Good noise isolating headphones can block out a massive amount of outside noise and let you relax in relative peave and quiet. The Monster Mobile Jamz headphones feature an in-line remote control and powerful noise isolation.

Product page: Monster Mobile Jamz
Price: $149.95